


The World That Was/The World That Wasn’t

by Rainboq



Series: How We Get Old [3]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Apologies, F/F, Hints of ChaseMarsh, I suck at tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26424070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainboq/pseuds/Rainboq
Summary: Victoria has crossed off all the names on her list of people to apologize to.Except one.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price, Victoria Chase/Kate Marsh
Series: How We Get Old [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886578
Comments: 19
Kudos: 29





	The World That Was/The World That Wasn’t

“I can’t believe you’re going to go back there.”

Victoria slowly nods to Chloe, her eyes still puffy and red from crying. “Yeah, well… I owe that much to her at least.”

Max rests a tender hand on her shoulder, the kind of gentle touch she still doesn’t think she deserves. “Well, we’re rooting for you.”

She nods again, getting up to leave their dingy little apartment. She winces internally. _I’m still a judgy fucking bitch._ She gives their place another lookover, standing in the doorway. It might be a small apartment, in an old building that will probably be demolished in a couple decades, but it’s Max and Chloe’s small apartment. Stuffed to the brim with their love for each other, wallpapered in Max’s polaroids and carefully maintained by Chloe’s surprisingly gentle touch. For all the shortcomings of the building, it was _their_ space: everything a monument to their connection and the feelings Victoria had been denying herself since…

“Thanks for hearing me out you two.”

She squeaks in shock as Chloe picks her up in a crushing bear hug, and Max’s skinny arms wrap around the pair. Chloe’s voice is surprisingly hoarse with emotions. 

“I hope you can find your peace.”

Victoria fights to keep the tears from flowing more, she’s going to need them for the road ahead. When her feet do touch the ground again the pair pull back and smile at her. _How many years of their friendship did I miss by waiting so long?_

Max smiles that vulnerable and disarming smile that had once raised teenage Victoria’s hackles. Now it just makes her heart ache. 

“You’re welcome back here if you’re ever in town, and let us know when you do it, okay Victoria?”

She nods and manages to make it into the elevator before the tears start flowing again. _God, how could I have been such an asshole to them? Fuck, even_ Chloe _was fucking sweet. I dunno if Max changed her, or if she was always like that and she got seriously fucked up by her dad dying._

The elevator dings and she steps out, taking some deep breaths to try and steady herself. _Time to face the sweetest of them all, I guess. I’m so not fucking ready for this._

She could have flown; it wouldn’t have been an issue. But she _deserves_ Victoria driving across the country to come and kneel before her in humble apology. Nothing else would do. Victoria fights to keep her ragged emotions in check with the miles clicking West. At around hour 13 of her 44-and-a-half hour drive she starts seriously wondering if Kate would even want her to self-flagellate this much, but this is as much about Victoria as it is about her. Victoria _needs_ this penance.

Victoria and making amends with everyone she ever hurt.

And she had to leave the person she hurt the most for last.

The crappy motels and fast food aren’t the worst part of the journey. It isn’t the cramped confines of her shitty corolla she’d purchased for her apology tour. The worst part is the dread. With every mile, it seeps deeper and deeper into her bones. There are times, hours even, where she seriously considers just turning off the road and calling it quits. Hours where she had to keep driving through the tears, her boney fingers making divots in the steering wheel.

Somewhere in Idaho, about a half-hour after she left Jerome she finally has her big meltdown.

She feels it coming, an emotional eruption years in the making. She manages to hold on enough to make it off I-84 and onto a dirt road between some farmland. Once she’s in park with her hazards on, she lets go and the emotions explode out. Years of pent up stress and anxiety boiling over into a near apocalyptic emotional eruption as she screamed. There are no words, just an outpouring of all the stress and guilt that she’s been saving for years after that week from hell in an outburst that leaves her throat raw.

An hour later she manages to get back on the road again, going west again.

Laying eyes on the remnants of the town she once sort of called home makes her chest ache. Some had been restored, but not much. Not nearly enough. Cleaning up an old dying town had been nobody’s priority -- restoring it even less so.

She can’t help thinking about her late-night talks with David. The bitterness he’d felt over Max and Chloe just leaving everything behind had felt so real because she’d felt it too. That they’d just been able to move on while the rest of them had stayed and suffered.

After her visit, she’d understood why. There was nothing for them there. Chloe’s parents were gone and from what she’d told her about what David had done disqualified him from that category. Instead they’d done what Victoria wishes she could do: build a life of their own.

Max had been strangely quiet the whole time, offering gentle words and assuring Victoria that none of it was her fault but not talking about her grief. The old Victoria would have grabbed a crowbar and pried until all of Max’s secrets tumbled out. Instead she’d let Max keep her secrets and respected that the only person she would ever tell was going to be getting married to her in the near future. She probably didn’t want to know. With the way Chloe talked about finding Rachel’s body, there was probably so much more to their story best left untold.

She takes her shoes off and wiggles her toes in the grass, letting the gentle prickles ground her senses. Her hearing is awash with the sounds of the wildlife: the song of birds, the roar of the ocean, the chattering of squirrels. _Look at me, channeling Samuel. Oh, how the mighty have fallen._

The walk to the spot feels long, each step another act of penance as she follows the path barefoot. She deserves the jab of every rock, the stab of broken twigs. Her once immaculately pedicured feet are rough from her long journey, her masks of maturity left in the ruins of Blackwell. Her soul is bared and she finally feels ready to speak the words that have tormented her for years.

“Uh, hey… Kate. I know I haven’t kept in touch like I should have but… I’ve been putting this off.”

She reaches a hand up to brush away her tears, quietly thankful that she didn’t even bother with makeup for this.

“The truth is that I’ve been trying to find the right words to say this, to be in the right place where this actually means something. Actually, you know, talking from the heart and not out my ass like I used to. I think I learned how to do that from you, even if you weren’t really trying to teach me. You showed vulnerability in ways that terrified me. You and Max. So, I did the bitch thing and lashed out. I hurt people I should have taken the time to sit down and really listen to.”

She takes a deep breath, steadying her shattered nerves and trying to master the waver in her voice.

“And holy _shit_ did I hurt you both. You especially, but the burden that I put on Max nearly broke her too. She… talked to me about it, watching you suffer like that and not really knowing how to fix things. Fixing things is like, what she does. She’s done a great job of it with Chloe, but I’m sure you know that. And that’s not even counting being so stuck in my shitty, petty one-sided feud with you that I didn’t notice what was going on at that party. I know, I know. I’m going there. Max assures me that you forgave me ages ago. But I haven’t forgiven myself. I don’t think I can. I might as well have dragged you up onto that roof myself. I—”

Her voice breaks and she takes more long, deep breaths to compose it again.

“I fucked up Kate. I fucked up so badly that I don’t think real forgiveness is possible. All it would have taken was for me to stand up and say ‘no, none of this is consenting’ and _none_ of what happened to you would have happened. You wouldn’t have ended up on video, you wouldn’t have ended up in that sicko’s lair and you sure as _hell_ wouldn’t have ended up on that roof. I was such a faux-feminist that I couldn’t stop sexual fucking assault while it was happening right in front of me!”

Her eyes burn from the tears, she doesn’t bother wiping them anymore.

“I’m sorry Kate. I’m sorry for everything. You deserved a better me than who you got. You were always a good person just trying to do her best and do right by everyone. I was just scared. Scared of you, and scared of what you represented. You were able to stay true to yourself and your faith while being better than any of us, and that made that stupid voice in the back of my head whisper that I was a bad person because _look_ at how you were doing without any of my advantages or petty bullshit. And I took it out on you rather than sitting down and looking at myself. That little fucker was right. I _was_ a bad person. I was probably the shittiest person there. I wasn’t psychotic like Nathan. I wasn’t some weirdo with an obsession and no empathy like Jefferson. I was just a girl scared that she was a bad person, and rather than trying to be better I fucked it up. I’m so sorry and I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

Victoria finally lets her eyes fall.

**Kate Marsh**

**09/12/1995-10/08/2013**

**Our Angel Got Her Wings**

She falls to her knees, a sob ripping through her body as she presses her forehead against the cool stone, a hand brushing over the engraved wings.

She has no idea how long she spends crying in the graveyard, only that the sun is getting low by the time she finally remembers how to breathe again.

She sits against the marker, her back against the polished granite. A half-remembered request tugs at her thoughts. Max had asked her to do something.

She digs out her phone and sends Max the asked for text.

Chloe looks from the photograph to Max and back again. “Are you sure about this?”

Her fiancé shakes her head. “No, but it’s not like this can go any worse than when we tried with Rachel, right?”

Chloe winces, remembering the horror show Max had put herself through on her behalf. “Yeah. As long as I’m not in a body bag, right?”

Max nods and takes a long, deep breath. “Well, here goes everything.”

| 

The lump in Victoria’s throat chokes her half to death as she stops the recording and collapses into the glade that had once been the grass outside of the Blackwell dorms. Her eyes fixed on the spot in the air where she’d seen Kate, standing on that damned ledge.

“Come on Victoria, you can do this. You might be too much of a coward to face her in person, but you can send a fucking _email_.”

Her thumb hovers over the send button before she finally closes her eyes and gets it over with already.

Reality lurches back into focus and Max scrambles to take stock of everything. When her eyes land on Chloe she practically launches herself into her fiancé’s arms.

Chloe manages to sweep her up in a tight hug and gently coos to her. “It’s okay, I’m here. Did you have to jump?”

Max pulls back and nods. “Y-yeah. Victoria wanted to apologize to Kate and I went back to stop her from jumping.”

Chloe’s eyes widen but she nods. “Whoa, I don’t want to think of a reality where Saint Kate isn’t around.”

Max gives Chloe a gentle squeeze. “Yeah, I guess I just needed her to give me that nudge. After dinner we need to go over what’s changed.”

Chloe nods and gives her forehead a kiss. “Sounds good Super Max.”

Her phone buzzes on the table and she reluctantly pulls away from her love to check it. Chloe hums to herself as she returns to her cooking. “Good news?”

The smile that takes over her face hurts her cheeks as she reads. “Oh yeah, great news. Victoria just told me that Kate asked her out to tea.”  
  
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**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday Kate I guess! This was definitely an experiment for me style wise, let me know what you think in the comments!
> 
> Thanks to Via, Jibz and SupportPaladin for betaing.


End file.
